


Unseen

by RisuAlto



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Probably ooc, Trans Danny Fenton, Whump, but very light on the comfort, i dont say it explicitly but fuck butch hartman, i mean mostly, it's been years since i've gone here, non-graphic but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27449869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisuAlto/pseuds/RisuAlto
Summary: Danny was lying on the ground in the hallway, and all Sam could think was—How did wemissthis?
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Sam Manson
Kudos: 84





	Unseen

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for Pickles from the Zelloyd Discord server, who requested a Danny Phantom fic with the prompt "high pain tolerance." I'm sorry that this is almost half a year late, and I'm sorry that it's shorter than what I usually write, but my spine injury has made publishing difficult, so when I had a pain free moment, I just ran with it until my arm started to hurt again. I hope you like this <3
> 
> This is not edited, and I apologize.

Danny was lying on the ground in the hallway, and all Sam could think was— _How did we_ miss _this?_

Between her and Tucker, the two people who knew him best, how could they not have known? It had been months since Danny had gotten his ghost powers— _months_ —and somehow from the very beginning, he’d managed to hide this.

_How?_

When Sam’s mind finally stopped spinning like the cursors on the school computers, the next thing she managed to think was, _Thank whatever non-ghostly powers are out there that I stayed late._

“Danny?” she asked, taking a couple of quick steps closer, trying to close the distance. There was a streak of light on the linoleum between them, the long, stretched imprints of light coming through the window at the end of the hallway, but it felt like a chasm. Like she needed to dodge it the way that they all used to dodge lines on the sidewalk.

Danny breathed in so hard that it sounded like it hurt, and then jerked up to his knees. Before Sam could reassure him that it was just her—no teachers, no bullies—he was already up on his feet again. And he looked—

Steady. Somehow. Like he hadn’t just been curled up in pain with furious bruises showing under where his old t-shirt had ridden up. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Sam!” he said, and she wondered if she was imagining the way his voice sounded like a few threads were missing, or if it had always been like that and she’d somehow missed it. Her tongue tasted like acid. “Man, Dash got me good there, but I’m fine. What’re you—”

“Don’t.”

The word was so choked, so full of darkness that Sam thought all goths everywhere would be proud. She might be, for having achieved the epitome of beauteous agony in a single word, if it wasn’t her _best friend_ hurting.

“Danny, I _saw_ it,” she said. “I saw where that bruise was. I saw you lying there on the ground for at least a whole minute before I—” She bit her tongue. “You’re not okay. Don’t try and tell me that you are.”

Almost like he’d suddenly gone from ghost to human, Danny dropped. Not totally, not back to the ground, but his way-too-normal posture from before and the way he was leaning hard on the lockers now were almost as different as levitating and standing. Even still, he looked away, staring at the golden window shape on the floor, and muttered, “It’s not even that bad.”

“What do you mean it’s not bad?!” Sam demanded, finally feeling like she could actually approach him and wasting no time in doing so. Her black, platform boots stomped across that glaring light on the tiles until she was standing right in front of her friend. Her real friend, not the version of him that looked like the fruit on the front of a cereal box. “Danny, what…”

A part of her wanted to ask him if it was just a side effect of the last ghost he fought. That’s where the bruise was, after all, where the vexed ghost’s magic, stone-looking fists had almost ripped a hole through Danny Phantom’s side during their fight. Maybe it was just the one ghost who had this power to make the wounds _stick_. But the façade that Sam had seen was too practiced to be something that Danny had just learned last night.

He was leaning heavily on her now, almost enough to throw her off balance. Sam twisted so that the lockers were at her back, holding them both up.

“It was just Dash being Dash, y’know?” Danny said, still looking down at the floor. His forehead was pressed to the top of her shoulder. “He just got me in the wrong side when he pushed. Bet he thinks _he’s_ the one who did this.” Danny laughed. “Jerk.”

“Sorry,” Sam whispered, very, _very_ carefully moving her arms so she could actually hold Danny instead of just awkwardly letting him prop himself up against her.

“I didn’t want you to know,” Danny said, like that wasn’t obvious. “I didn’t want you guys to know. At first, I was just thinking it’d go away once I got more used to the—” she didn’t miss the way his blue eyes still darted to each side before continuing, as if they weren’t in danger of being locked in the school at this point because it was so late “—ghost stuff, it’d go away. Like learning to fly and all that. By the time I realized it was, like, a real permanent thing…”

Sam’s chest hurt. It was worse than the days when she and Tucker had to chase Danny halfway across town to be there for him during a ghost attack. Her eyes squeezed shut, and it was only when she felt the coldness on her cheeks that she realized her eyes were _wet_.

 _Not my makeup_ , she thought, knowing there was no way they’d get lucky enough not to see anyone on the way home. But her thoughts quickly focused again, like always. Even if it was easier to think of wrecked eyeliner instead of her wrecked best friend.

“Danny…” she said. There was so much to say that the words wouldn’t actually come. “Can you walk home?” was what finally came out.

He looked up at her— _up_ —and blinked slowly. “Yeah, ‘course,” he said, starting to straighten up. And then, even with the help from her boots, he was taller again.

Sam didn’t let go, though, keeping an arm around his waist, even as she realized what this would look like to anyone who didn’t know. Her cheeks felt warm, suddenly, and that—that was something she would _not_ deal with right now, so hopefully her hair would hide it. Or she could say it was the light. Yeah. “We’re going to your place, then,” she said firmly. “No way are my parents letting me bring a boy up to my room. And no way am I letting you deal with this by yourself anymore.”

“I thought you— You gotta trust us, Danny,” she continued as they started walking out of the school. “We’re your friends. I’m—Tucker and I are here for you, any time, about this stuff.” The ghost stuff. Because who else could be?

“It’s really not that bad, Sam,” Danny said, already trying to push away once they got outside. Sure, it’d be better if no one asked questions, but _still_ , it was only the thought that struggling would hurt Danny more that convinced Sam to let go.

And the way that he was standing up straight, looking completely like every other day they’d ever walked home together— Sam swallowed. It felt like sand. Just how much more was Danny Phantom supposed to take, before Danny Fenton couldn’t?

**Author's Note:**

> Sam helps him ice the bruises and he falls asleep like halfway through. She and Tucker discuss the fact that they are going to do better at not letting DP take hits, even if it means being utterly embarrassing distractions. Maybe someday I will write a proper part 2, but I promise they take care of him.


End file.
